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It had been lying there for days, screen dark, frame chipped where a port of connection gaped open and ragged after something had been torn away with violence.
Sometimes that was how things went, in life and afterlife alike. Something got torn away, so suddenly and painfully, it left a wound too deep to close and a silence too wide to overcome.
What was a broken tablet good for?
Vox, they had called it. Now it was stripped bare of the name. Of its voice.
No one in the big, bustling tower paid much attention to it. People came, people left. It was a busy time, a time of change, a time of new faces appearing and of old ones fading away. Hell had always been a place of short memory. One day at the top, thrown to the pit the next. It was the same for all of them. Hell made no exceptions.
“Ayy, now you are the one sulking? You have no right, sábes? But whatever, keep ignoring me then, that’s all you ever did anyway. ¡If you're going to ser complicado, entonces FINE; I don't have to talk to you!” The words were spat towards the tablet by a stilted voice hiding a deep pain. Huge claws had tried to coax a reaction out of it, to make the screen flare back to life. But it remained dark and unresponsive to the touch, it remained dark and unresponsive to the words as well. So, it was finally tossed back onto a couch in a nearby corner.
“Aren’t you done acting like a fucking child?” a woman asked two days later. “As if you haven’t messed up enough already. What the fuck do you think will happen? That we pity your sorry ass?!” A tiny finger jabbed at the screen while the words were uttered with harsh mockery, only showing traces of the hurt behind. “You know what, your decision, you keep rotting then.” And once again, the tablet was left alone.
A broken tablet was good for nothing.
And hadn’t it been broken from the start?
The lack of time in hell made every joy, every high, and every victory seem less significant. Moments passed in a heartbeat, never to return, replaced by defeat and the cutting longing for the bliss of the past. – And, worse, for what could have been but had slipped out of reach after barely brushing against eager fingertips.
It seemed to be part of the punishment, part of damnation. But what if there was a shortcut to Heaven – to live inside one moment of happiness, forever?
The two voices now and then. Worry seeped into their words, but rarely enough to outweigh the anger they carried.
The tablet’s screen was no longer black, hadn’t been for quite some time. Yet it showed no sign of recognition, no flicker of awareness or the conscious soul once inhabiting it, now, seemingly, retreated to the depths of itself, or what remained of it. – Focused solely on one moment in time.
“A picture frame,” the static-distorted voice of a visitor commented in the middle of an unremarkable night. The tall figure had emerged from the shadows, undetected by the inhabitants of the tower. Surprise resonated in his statement and, beneath, something shattered and raw, torn out into the open against the speaker’s will. “Pathetic to the end. Why this one of all memories?” The disdain in his voice wasn’t real, only a mask to hide what he would not, could not show.
A moment later, he answered himself, voice quieter now, roughened by the weight of their past:
“It’s the feeling of an opportunity in your hand, am I right? All options seemed still open then. We had it all. Or so it seemed to me. Until you made your choice.”
He lifted the tablet – the picture frame, as he had so aptly called it – into the soft palm of his clawed hand. And, pressing his loot against his coat, he merged back into the darkness from which he’d come.
His path led him to a home that was only half a room, with its fragments dissolving into a swamp and the forest surrounding it. There, he set the picture frame on display, on a pillow atop a table.
It was his memory too. His opportunity. His choice erased in this moment of bliss where time and space stood still for them.
The past pulsed with vibrant vigor right in front of him and deep within – a stark contrast to the lifeless picture frame, making his heart clench in unknown ways, tightening his throat and tearing at his self-control.
And with his gaze fixed on the picture, shameful tears building in the corner of his eyes, he could not quiet the part of him wishing he could join him there.
